"Personal Experience"

The following editor's comment by Farrell Till is from the mailbag section of *The Skeptical Review* May/June 1994:

Ho hum, another Christian who has had a "personal experience"! If I had a penny for every Christian who has had a personal experience with Jesus, I could retire a rich man. The only problem, of course, is that "personal experiences" are purely emotional and psychological, so in terms of evidence or proof they are absolutely worthless. Muslims have "personal experiences" and so do Mormons, Hindus, Sikhs, and you name it. If it is a religion, it has its believers who have had personal experiences.

If a Muslim should tell Ms. Bahn that he is a FIRM believer in the prophet Mohammed and has had two "personal experiences" that NO ONE can take away from him, so therefore he KNOWS that Mohammed is Allah's prophet, would this mean anything to her? Would she see this testimony of "personal experience" as proof that Islam is God's true religion? Certainly not--yet she expects us to accept her testimony of personal experiences as absolute proof that Christ exists.

Of all the arguments that Christians use, the personal-experience one is by far the most idiotic. If I should claim that I have had two "personal experiences" in which God informed me that the Bible is a hoax that Satan perpetrated in order to deceive the world and that NO ONE can take those experiences from me and make me believe that the Bible is God's word, how many Christians would accept this as proof that their view of the Bible is erroneous? None of them would, yet they seem to think that we should accept without question that they have had "personal experiences" that confirm the truth of their belief in Jesus. That anyone would even offer such "evidence" as proof of his faith merely shows that he is incapable of logical reasoning. That is exactly the situation that Ms. Bahn finds herself in.

She wonders why we read the Bible if we don't believe it and why we don't just turn the dial or switch when we hear something about it on the air waves. Well, I'll make a deal with Ms. Bahn. If she will get her side to do the same and just not read the books and magazines and see the movies and TV programs they find objectionable rather than trying to ban them everywhere for everyone and if she will get her side to stop trying to force its "Christian-nation" agenda onto our society through the various tactics that Bible fundamentalists are using to influence legislative and judicial decisions, then I will stop publishing The Skeptical Review. Until then, we will continue to publish evidence that clearly shows that people like Ms. Bahn are living in fantasyland.

She said that "(l)ife is too precious to waste it in being rebellious or critical," and so what did she do? She sat down and wrote a critical letter that demonstrates a rebellious attitude toward the world's best biblical scholarship. No, we are not laying claim to being the world's best scholarship, but we do claim to have that scholarship on our side. The Bible inerrancy doctrine has been so thoroughly discredited that few serious scholars believe it anymore. Reputable seminaries no longer teach it to their students, and their professors freely admit that the Bible is riddled with myths and legends. In the position that she tries to defend, then, Ms. Bahn has simply demonstrated that she is willing to waste part of her precious life to rebel against what the world's foremost scholars say about biblical origins. In this respect, she puts herself into the position of those who were outraged by Galileo's announcement of a scientific discovery that conflicted with their view of what the Bible taught. Who knows? Maybe some of those who opposed Galileo had had "personal experiences" that made them absolutely certain that the sun revolved around the earth.

I will agree with Ms. Bahn in one thing: life is indeed precious. It is much too precious to waste clinging to a faith that had its origin in superstitious times when mystics thought that God routinely talked to them and commanded deeds as ignominious as the murder and rape of children (Num. 31:17-18). We aren't praying for Ms. Bahn, of course, but we do sincerely hope that some day she will come to her senses.

I have written a personal letter to inform her that she was receiving The Skeptical Review at the request of another subscriber who will be notified that she thinks it is TRASH, so if she should ever attempt to win her friend to Jesus through testimony of her "personal experiences," he just might tell her what he thinks about her personal experiences. I further assured her that her name would be removed from our mailing list, because we can see no need to send TSR to someone who is just going to throw it "straight in the trash." Also, we can see nothing to gain from casting our pearls before swine.